5 months

5 months and growing . . .



this has been a month of some big firsts for little miss willow.

she sits up!



she had her first interactive playground experience.

swing!


slide! (with some help from mama)


and a few more firsts . . .

her first tooth (only one so far . . . the other is fast on its root, though) on october 28--nearly two weeks later than nate's first two teeth which came on the same day. also unlike nate, she won't let me get a picture of it. her tongue is always in the way! darn it!

her first taste of "solid" food . . . a bit of nate's yogurt on her lip. really just a taste. no fun faces were made, sorry. and she didn't seem particularly excited about it, either. but, we all know more food adventures are to come soon enough.

i'm brilliant!

ok, maybe not brilliant, but at the very least inspired. see this very unassuming door?



this is christmas central in the golden house. (note the christmas paper.) at some point this may actually be the site of our cmas tree. you can even see our stocking hooks (five of them in a little row there) from last year.

but for now, we are making a cmas list for santa. nate is old enough to want to make a cmas list but not quite adept enough with a pen to actually write a whole list. nate also LOVES, LOVES, LOVES toy catalogs. so here's my plan, arm nate with his toy catalogs, a pair of scissors, and some tape. let him make a visual cmas list. he can cut pictures out of his toy catalogs and tape them up on the cmas paper. i think it will be fun. obviously, we are working on the "just because it is on your list doesn't necessarily mean you will get it" concept, but i also know that is a lesson that will take *years* to learn.

am i a cool mom, or what?

farewell

our good friends, Lisa, Dave, and Dyson, recently moved to Pittsburgh, PA. (ok, Dave isn't in the picture.) we will miss you terribly, but we are very excited for you and hope to hear good things very soon.

visitors

earlier this fall we had a pair of very cute visitors in our yard. they must have been twins because there was only one doe with them (on the other side of the fence you see) and they were the same size. one of them still had spots (you can just barely see them) and the other one didn't, which i thought was interesting. they danced around the fence for a while, trying to decide how/where to jump over. then BOING they were over.

p.s. normally, i consider deer to be ROUS's (rodents of unusual size) because they eat everything in my yard that i care about. but these two were pretty cute.

episode 233

i am a huge fan of ER. been watching it for many years now. i'm sad that this is the last season.

this morning was THAT episode of ER (in re-runs). Wines and Misdemeanors. the episode where John Carter and his girlfriend Kem, who are expecting a little boy, are told that the baby has died in utero. stillborn.

this episode came almost exactly a year after my own still born son. it was very difficult to watch. but good in some sense, too. the portrayal was very close to my own. and it was great to see someone, anyone, show it with that much reality. not just glossing over it saying "oh, what a tragedy." they got into the emotions of it, too.

it still makes me cry . . . watching my life play out on tv. but i can say that with time, the intense pain of this experience is fading a very tiny bit.

and on a similar note of re-runs, we are expecting our version of the MISSing Angels Bill to get into legislative committee next month. all in preparation to get it into the regular 2009 session and get it passed, again. if my governor doesn't sign it this time, i'm personally going to kick his hispanic ass all the way to DC just to get him out of the state. so don't be surprised to hear more about it in the coming months and to be called to action early next year.

blue

i've been feeling like absolute crap lately. (and i am borrowing my grandmother's favorite swear word as a very mild stand-in for the word that runs through my own head.)

feeling blue. missing jesper terribly.

feeling isolated and lonely, despite getting out of the house nearly every day of the week. too many friends have moved away and now i feel like i'm nearly back to square one in having someone, anyone, i relate to on a close level.

my self-esteem is in the toilet. i'm gaining weight, STILL. not getting enough exercise (ok, not getting any exercise). eating too much and not much of it any good. as a sign that my self-esteem is low, i have stubbed my toes and feet on every piece of furniture in my house. and yesterday i sliced my thumb wide open on a broken glass.

feeling overwhelmed by my disaster of a house. being unable to get on top of the mess that we live in.

feeling overwhelmed and dogged by the emotional baggage left over from willow's birth. and unable to find two spare seconds to deal with it.

i know this is what all parents have to do, but i hate having to choose between my children's emotional health and my own. not to mention the choice between exercise and sleep. (or most things and sleep.) i lose every time. and so does the exercise. (how can i have the energy to exercise if i don't get enough sleep?)

yes, i know that taking care of myself lets me take better care of my children, but there are only 24 hours in the day. on top of beating myself up on my furniture and dishes, we all had a terrible day yesterday. screaming and crying for hours--all of us. but most of the people in the house went to bed early last night (i tried, but couldn't sleep, so i got up and worked on a project online), and at least a couple of us have had a better day today.

so i'm determined to change things. i've started taking my thyroid meds again. (i had taken a break to see if they were really "necessary," and with the weight gain and depression i think they are.) i've started keeping a food diary. i may not eat the absolute best all the time, but the food diary not only holds me accountable but also shows me progress which is a reward in itself. i've started walking more, too. i can't run and i'm no good at swimming, so walking is my exercise. when the construction between my house and nate's school is done (any . . . day . . . now), i am going to start walking him to or from school. and i'm going to dig out some workout videos, too. i don't have to leave my house to get some exercise in, i just have to find the energy and motivation.

and i'm determined to get my house in order. jeff has been helping with the dishes a lot more, and that helps greatly. i'm still doing laundry from our trip, but when that's done i can usually keep on top of it pretty well. i just need to get the rest of the place cleaned up and put in place. my house will never be perfect but when i feel overwhelmed by the mess, it only makes me more depressed and irritable.

one little step at a time. i'm hoping with every little step the rest of the crap will fall away (and maybe some lbs in the process).

swim classes

last month, we enrolled nate in swim classes. 6 classes, 3 weeks. after a summer at the pool, i want to keep him "in the mood" until next summer. and hopefully, he'll get better at swimming before then!




his teacher was great. and he LOVED it. he's always been a bit of a water baby, but now he's advanced. he was sticking his face in the water, blowing bubbles, and even going completely underwater holding his breath for a bit.

we **probably** won't put him in another class until after the holidays. and then again in the late spring just before the pools open for the summer. he'd go every day if he could, but i can't do that for many reasons.

the hair . . . revisited

so maybe you read it and maybe you didn't. long ago, at the beginning of my blog, i posted about THE HAIR. it is nate's lovely. so here is chapter two of "the hair."

for months now we haven't had the hair around. nate kept losing it in his bed, behind his bed, under his bed, in the couch, in his toys, you name it. he'd get upset because it was gone. we'd get upset because it was never so important as right at bedtime. oh, the joy of looking for something AT bedtime. we started refusing to look for it at bedtime. so he got used to sleeping without it. then the next time i found it, i put it in his dresser drawer. not hidden from him, just out of sight.

recently, we've been going through the transition of several friends moving, new classroom of friends, new baby in the house, new stuff all around. so the other night, after a friend's birthday party (a friend who has now moved across the country) nate was giving me a hug at bedtime, and he started playing with my braid. out of the blue asked, "mama, where's my hair?" we all knew what he was asking for. so i told him it was in his dresser drawer. he asked if he could have it, and we said yes, but that it had to stay in his bed.

it does not consume his bedtime desires like it once did, but it is still a source of comfort in trying and changing times for him. and that makes me happy. i'm glad we still have it. that it wasn't lost for good at any point. and that it still gives him the comfort he needs.





i will say it again, i don't care if he has it until he's 50 or more. if that little bit of me is all it takes to help my boy feel safe, who has the right to take that away from him?

4 months

can it be? she's 4 months old already? i guess so.

at her 4 mo well baby check-up she was 17 lbs 11 oz. yes, she nearly doubled her birth weight in a mere 4 months.

some of her latest tricks are a weird tongue-involved noise she makes. sounds rather like she's gonna hurl, but she thinks it's cool. she also does the fake cough for attention. and she's started making another noise that sounds like she's sucking in air loudly. yes, she's a master at noises.

she also likes to laugh. nate can make her laugh doing absolutely nothing! other mere mortals (like mama and papa) must work at it a bit. her giggle always makes me laugh, too.

she's working very hard on sitting up but couldn't care less about rolling over.

and she's teething in a major way. i expect teeth to pop through any day. but as any mother of a teething baby can tell you, it could happen tomorrow or it could happen in a week or in a month. i know they are coming and that they are close, but i can't predict when the first pearly whites will finally poke through her gums.


she's still as cute as ever!

4 years and a party

nate's birthday party was a bit delayed this year because his actual birthday was on labor day weekend and so many people were going to be out of town. so we held it the following weekend in the park. the weather cooperated, which wasn't the case on labor day weekend. it was a bit too breezy for candles, though. so much for my plan to give each kid their own candle to blow out! nate didn't even get to blow his own out because i couldn't get them lit.

for the record, it was a MONSTER JAM themed party.


for the life of me, i can't remember why he was crying. but i think it started with the singing. and if you know nate, you know that tears go hand-in-hand with singing--they always have and i still don't know why.


Gravedigger pinata.